


Drabble #3 The Man You Are

by indigowild



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:49:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigowild/pseuds/indigowild





	Drabble #3 The Man You Are

Daniel Sousa is not a good man.

Oh, he tries to be. He brings his elderly landlord's mail and newspaper to him every evening when he gets home, because he knows the man's arthritic knees are getting worse. He volunteers with the local veterans group, talking with guys who are having problems adjusting to life as an amputee. He helps his 6 year old nephew make a wooden car and spends hours tossing a football for him every time Daniel visits his sister. When he works late at the office and is the last person left, he cleans out the coffee pot and reloads it so that it's ready to brew in the morning.

During the daylight hours, he tries so hard. He is courteous, efficient, and determined. When Peggy explains why she doesn't need him to defend her, he works hard at shifting his views and growing beyond the dated notions of women as "ladies" and how "gentlemen" should treat them. As the months go by, he is humbled by Peggy's skills as an agent. He asks, and so she teaches him the fine art of picking a lock, hot-wiring a car, and assembling a simple explosive out of four common ingredients. He apologizes to her for lashing out at what he perceived to be her "betrayal," and she understands. Thompson compliments him on his work in several recent difficult cases, and he even overhears Peg's friend Angie describe him as a "real good guy."

But when it's late and his daylight shell of suit, vest, tie, and leg are discarded...

When he falls into his bed, exhausted and sore, and the darkness of the night blankets him...

Then, he is not a good man.

Not always.

Some nights, as he tries to lure his mind into sleep by reviewing the mundane details of his day, the thoughts come, unbidden. Amidst images of reports and files and numbers, a flash of warm brown eyes or the curve of a neck. He immediately tries to block them out with thoughts of Thompson's last boring group lecture or an image of how Krzeminski used to stuff half a hamburger into his mouth in one bite. Usually this works, and he drops off into the protection of sleep, relieved.

But some nights when he's lying there almost too exhausted to drift off, he isn't able to fight them. And once they start, they flood through his mind, engulfing him in a restless heat.

Her long, smooth fingers, gliding across his hand as she showed him the best way to twist the lock pick. Their heat left paths that he swore he could sense even hours later. He feels them tingling now .

The thin black straps of her slip and bra, in stark contrast to the white curve of her shoulder and the bare expanse of her back (yes, he'd looked, even as his mind focused in on the circular scars dotting her flesh). It begged to be licked and nibbled, kissed until goosebumps rose, like the ones that were spreading across his forearms.

The bow-tied neckline of her purple dress and the glimpses of soft skin below it. His fingers would usually twitch at that thought, aching to tug it open.

The scent of her perfume, something cinnamon and warm, that drifted past him when they sat side by side poring over Russian war documents. He'd had to take shallow calming breaths that day. Now he sucked in air with shaky inhalations.

The soft press of her breast against his shoulder as she leaned over him to pluck a file from his hands. He was grateful that the click of her heels as she returned to her desk had helped mask the small groan that escaped his lips. In his nighttime world though, there was nothing to hide his quickening breath and sighs...and no need to.

The maddening curve of her hips and behind as she bent over Dooley's desk to translate the Russian code. He'd turned away quickly that day, crutching rapidly down to the men's room so he could wash his hands and face with cold water. Now, in his mind's eye he lingered, his gaze tracing down her legs and then back up to the perfect handholds her hips made. God, he ached.

Her mouth, painted a shade of red that couldn't be ignored. He'd seen her once, slipping off her heels in the evening when they were the only two left, her full lips parting in a hushed moan of relief. He'd grabbed a file with gory crime scene photos and sat with his face buried in it for the next ten minutes, grateful for the protection of his desk, ears burning. The sound echoed in his ears now, drowning out the rustling of his sheets and the cars on the streets outside. Sweat gathering along his forehead, his spine felt like it was on fire, a burning low in his gut.

Peg sitting on the edge of the infirmary bed, leaning across him to undo the buckle restraining his left wrist, soft hair brushing against his chest and arm as he tried to help her with his free hand. The moment slammed into him like a gut punch, a kaleidoscope of impressions exploding in his mind. Body heat, gentle fingers, cinnamon, the press of her body, the whisper of her jacket and blouse, her lips curved in a pleased smile, his ankles and wrist tugging uselessly against the leather straps. At the time he'd still been groggy and horrified at what he had done, but now...

In the darkness, that was the moment he broke against.

At night, Daniel was not a good man.

Sometimes, he was just...

 

... a man.

 

 

 


End file.
